VANCOUVER — She had an older sister who made her believe women could do anything, but when her inspiration and role model died in a car accident, Jennifer Siebel Newsom soon heard the eerie silence.

“There just aren’t that many women out there who are willing to speak out about where we are right now,” she says. “We have to recognize that part of that reluctance is due to the fact women are not in power, and the media will have to start taking some responsibility for that.”

Big words and a big message, but Siebel Newsom has a big name — if you live in California. She is married to the Golden State’s current Lieutenant-governor, Gavin Newsom, and she’s also taken her own turn in front of the lens as an actor, having starred in such films as Something’s Gotta Give, In the Valley of Elah and the TV show Mad Men (in which she played a lesbian lover).

“I came to the world of entertainment after living in Africa, and living with bush men, so I think I was already seeing things differently than most actresses who end up here, but I’d go to movies and look at the women on screen,” she says.

“The roles were always small. They characters were always sexualized, and if there was a female protagonist at all, she was the sidekick who was objectified. I was shocked at how pathetic it all was.”

Her outrage is refreshing. And it’s palpable. Sitting with Siebel Newsom in a hotel suite on the eve of her Sundance premiere is a bit like sitting with a law student about to write the bar exam. All she wants to do is tell you what she knows, and list the nitty-gritty details of injustice.

“Only three per cent of executive decision makers in the media are women,” she says. “Three per cent — out of the thousands of women who work in your industry — only three per cent actually have any power to change things. If you want to look at why women are so misrepresented, that’s where you have to start.”

Representation is the battleground for the hearts and minds of the next generation, which is why she set out to make Miss Representation, a feature documentary about the facts surrounding the portrayal of in mainstream media products.

Girls learn how to be girls through role modelling and mass media images, she says. And right now, she believes we’re instilling all the wrong values in the tender hearts of our young sisters.

“I know from experience that as an actor, it’s all about the way you look. There is nothing else that really matters. Talent counts, but they see it as secondary to the way a woman looks. And she has to be sexy, and she has to be accessible. If she won’t work as eye-candy, she won’t work.”

There is a hint of rage in Siebel Newsom’s tone, and it’s the same rage that bubbles up in the heart of every competent professional whose watched a sister slide into the tar pit of sexuality in exchange for promotion.

She says we have to take responsibility for our own actions, and recognize that women have to work together if we’re going to change attitudes. When one woman sleeps with the boss to get ahead, she hurts everyone because it perpetuates all the wrong stereotypes about female worth.

“There are stupid women out there, just like there are stupid men. That’s why we have to work together to raise awareness about what is happening.”

Miss Representation gets into the statistical data, but Siebel Newsom says the numbers simply reaffirm what women already know: We remain under-represented in the boardroom and at every corporate level.

“Only seven per cent of directors are women, thirteen per cent are writers, and everything caps out at 16 per cent,” she says. “We never get any bigger than 16 per cent of the core decision makers in moviemaking.”

While those figures are upsetting, she says there are worse stats to ponder: She says 15 per cent of rape victims are girls under the age of 12.

“When I found that out . . . I had to take action,” she says.

“How can we walk around thinking we live in a healthy society when this is how society looks at a young girl? We are sexualizing children. We are sexualizing our daughters, and I have to say, I really don’t know why.”

“We could point the finger at so many things, but we can’t just blame men. We have to take it on our shoulders, too, because women can be our own worst enemies. We end up buying into this backward sense of value.”

The more women compete, cat-fight and wrestle over the same catch, the more it plays to the status quo. Raising awareness, working together and most importantly, taking media images to the mat are the only solutions.

“Women are constantly debased. Actresses are constantly told to lose weight or being asked to take their clothes off. We have to work together to shame the producers or the directors who are doing this. We have to make people accountable and ask them to defend their decisions. For the most part, they’re just oblivious until you shake their head a little,” she says.

“Eventually, people do get it. And they are happy to help. But it’s a learning curve.”

Siebel Newsom takes a deep breath and looks out at the dirty snow. “When I lost my sister, I wanted to become the change in the world I knew she would be . . . so much of this is for her . . . and for all the sisters we’ve lost.”

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